For everyone else, though, they should simply let the race for college football’s most prestigious award play out for a long while — at least until the first Saturday of November, when Fournette (a junior-to-be) draws Alabama for perhaps the final time in his collegiate career.

And as luck would have it … the Tigers will entertain the vaunted Crimson Tide in Baton Rouge, La.

For those with short memories, Fournette bore the look of a Heisman shoo-in for the first two months of this season; but a desultory effort against Alabama (31 rushing yards, one TD) — coupled with LSU’s 30-16 defeat and Derrick Henry’s 200-yard eruption on the same field — knocked Fournette from the ranks of being an unimpeachable front-runner

In fact, five weeks later, Fournette didn’t even garner an invite to New York City, as one of the three Heisman finalists (Alabama’s Henry, Stanford’s McCaffrey, Clemson QB Deshaun Watson) — despite finishing with the nation’s best per-game average for rushing yards.

Which sets the stage for 2016: McCaffrey vs. Fournette could become the most captivating Heisman battle of the last 30 years. It has all the built-in trappings of a supreme apples-to-apples competition: Speed, stats, power, unlimited natural gifts, superior football instincts, ample TV exposure and prominent schedules.

Of course, nothing attracts a college-TV audience like Alabama; and between McCaffrey and Fournette (1,953 rushing yards, 22 TDs in 2015) … only the latter will have a regular-season shot against historically the country’s premier rush defense.